


one gray day i was alive on this earth

by Cinnamonbookworm



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends to Enemies, Gen, NPCs - Freeform, drinking buddies, spoilers for Petals to the Metal and beyond, the original title for this was why do i love npcs too much, yeah you read that main pairing right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11427036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Cinnamonbookworm
Summary: “Relax, Ram. Your cover’s not blown. Not when you just decimated us in that race.”Hurley smiles. “Thanks, Hammerhead.”In which: I read too much into one line of dialogue and create an entirely weird and unconventional friendship and backstory for it.(AKA 5 Times Hurley and Maarvey navigate gray areas of life + 1 in the afterlife).





	one gray day i was alive on this earth

**Author's Note:**

> Was re-listening to TAZ after Stolen Century wrapped up and came across this one line of dialogue and just It Wouldn't Leave Me Alone, okay. I'm sitting here suffering. Suffer with me. Bonus angst points for this friendship pairing because They're Both Dead Now! Wow!  
> Title is from the poem "A Gray Day" by Elena Shvarts because all my titles are from poetry because i'm not creative enough to come up with my own aesthetic titles. Also, it fits.

_Magnus: You don’t care if [the Hammerheads] get killed. RIght?_

_Hurley: I do. I-I do. You can’t- You can’t-_

-The Adventure Zone Episode 21, Petals to the Metal, Chapter IV

 

i.

It begins innocently, as most things do.

Most things, however, do not necessarily begin with a group of twenty or so young children loading into the back of a cart and driving to the Goldcliff Zoo, lunches in their hands and tiny shoes on their feet.

The cart is normally used for trade, but an exception has been made today, because today they are going to learn about the animals. It is here, on this cart, with the wind racing through her short hair and the open sky above her, that Hurley begins to feel some sort of an affinity for the thing.

They go over a bump and all the children bounce just a little bit, clutching their sack lunches tighter. Hurley can’t help but smile at the sensation, even as their teacher holds onto the back door to the cart a little tighter.

She makes eye contact with a boy across the cart. He’s got a book in his hand, a great big book with a pirate flag on the cover, and he quickly turns back to it, ignoring her smile. Hurley looks him over. Big dark eyes. A scar just above his upper lip. Hair buzzed close to his scalp, like whoever cut it wasn’t all that concerned about style. The wooden name tag around his neck reads “Maarvey.”

Hurley looks down and runs her fingers along her own name tag. They were the first things they’d made, at the beginning of the school year. She’d never been all that good at whittling, but she spent all night carefully crafting each letter to look just so. It’s so much a contrast to the name tag in front of her: haphazardly and crookedly carved. She wonders if the double-A thing is a spelling error or not.

They go over another bump. This time, she catches the boy looking at her. He smiles. She smiles back.

“Caught ‘ya lookin’,” he says, and his voice has an edge to it. A something. Maybe it’s the particular accent, the one that tells her he’s gone a little further out of his way to get to school this morning than she has.

Hurley extends her hand, tucking her lunch bag under her other arm. “I’m Hurley.”

“I know. It’s on ‘ya nametag. Do ‘ya think I’m stupid or something?”

Hurley halfway pulls her arm back. “No, I’m just… I’m just being polite, that’s all.”

Maarvey, the boy, looks her up and down, then nods approvingly and extends his own hand. They shake. “I’m Maarvey,” he says. “And yes it has two A-s. I’m special that way.”

“Are you excited for the zoo?” she asks.

He shrugs. “I like animals,” he replies. “School, not so much.”

“But you like books.”

“What can I say?” Maarvey asks. “I’m a sucker for a good adventure.” They’re friends, then. Just like that.

That, though, is not the moment that is important. The moment that is important comes a few hours later, as they’re wandering past small cages with iron bars, wooden sticks held out in front of them like a pirate duo, and they come across an animal trainer.

“The shark’s the best one here,” Maarvey is saying. “Obviously. The most fearsome of all-” and then he stops, suddenly, and Hurley stops walking too, and they watch as the trainer strikes an animal with a big black stun baton.

He hits the animal’s golden brown hide and there’s a cry of pain and maybe this is something they were never supposed to see so young, but they do. Hurley and Maarvey watch this beautiful animal cry - throwing its two elegant curved horns back - and the two of them both grab their wooden sticks a little bit tighter.

“He can't do that, can he?” Hurley asks in a whisper, more than horrified.

Maarvey grits his small teeth. “People ‘round here do lots of things they shouldn’t.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Never said it did.” Maarvey places his sack lunch on the ground and Hurley follows suit. A quiet alliance is made in the moments that follow.

The two of them, armed with nothing but their sticks, walk up to the door next to the cage and wait, through a few more seconds of painful noise, for the trainer to leave the cage.

It’s luck, maybe, what happens next. Or fate. Istus’ intervention, Hurley will think, when looking back on the moment years later. Somehow, Maarvey’s blow lands just right, Hurley’s next one does too, and it’s not enough to do much to the man other than make him drop his baton in surprise.

They both get slapped. And then lectured. And their parents are less than pleased. But they leave that zoo with a friendship, an alliance, and an electric stun baton. And neither of them ever really forget that ram that brought them together.

 

ii.

The thing about growing up, Maarvey decides about halfway through his later years of education, is that there’s such a thing as a gray area.

He’d known this before, of course. But he’d thought it was just his muddled childhood brain confusing rights for wrongs and wrongs for rights. Now, though, he knows that’s just not true. There’s this No Man’s Land, somewhere between what’s lawfully right and what’s a punishable offense, and Maarvey thinks he’d like to camp out there for a while. Not forever really, just for now, because he’s feeling a little in the middle right now.

A little in the middle of childhood and adulthood, a little in the middle of being not too tall and not too short, and, of course, a little in the middle of being almost cool and almost not-cool.

For a while he hadn’t cared about that last part. He had been okay with it just being him and Hurley against the world. Best friends united in a common goal of being adventurers, but that’s a goal that’s faded with time. The adventures got less real after a while. Maybe that was growing up. Also, there is the matter of grades.

Because there’s this test coming up. This big one. Maarvey forgets the name - to him it’s not really important - but to Hurley, he knows that to Hurley it’s everything. It’s the difference between her being able to get the job she wants, the job he knows she’s destined to have (a _protector_ , of all things) and her not being able to and Maarvey wants to help. He wants to help so badly.

He’s been helping everyone else. He’s smart, that way. Clever enough to get most of the answers right and also clever enough to pick the lock to the teacher’s desk and retrieve the answers he doesn’t. There are kids who need it. Who need it now more than ever just to get by, to come home and not be greeted by another black eye. There are also kids who don’t, but Maarvey’s never been the kind of guy to turn away a quick buck.

Hurley’s refusing, though. R-e-f-u-s-i-n-g. And that hurts, in a way, because it’s not like getting his hands on this was easy. But he’d do it for her, for his best friend. He’d do it again, too.

“What? Are ‘ya too good for this or something?” Maarvey asks towards the end of the conversation that began with her refusing. “Are ‘ya too good for me? Have you finally come to that conclusion?”

“What? No,” she tells him, shaking her head vigorously, but he still doesn’t quite believe her. “I just- This isn’t the way to go about things, Maarves. I appreciate that you did this for me, I really do, but- How am I supposed to live with myself if I pass the test to become a _protector of the law_ by breaking it?”

“Technically no laws were broken,” Maarvey mumbles under his breath. She hears him anyways.

“I don’t want to bet my future on technicalities!”

“I don’t see why you’re refusing this!” He says, and his voice is getting a little louder. “One iffy deed isn’t going to destroy you! Hell, if it destroys you what does that say about me, huh? How must you see me?”

Hurley frowns. “That’s different, and you know it. You’re helping others, you’re… Well, most of the time you’re helping other people. That’s what I want to do. We’re on the same side! Like we’ve always been!”

“But you still won’t let me help you?”

“Maarvey,” she starts, and then falters. “We’re just… different.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he tells her, even though he very much does not get it. He doesn’t get why she won’t let him help her. He doesn’t get why she can’t see why he’s upset. He doesn’t get any of it. Maarvey understands a lot about the world at this point. But he, for the life of him can’t quite understand Hurley, and there’s where the root of this fracture lies.

Because it is a fracture. If one were to map it out, it would crack and stretch in two different directions, growing the space between - No Man’s Land - larger and larger, until it’s all that’s left. But that’s later.

 

iii.

Hurley gets to know the streets, after a while.

She isn’t assigned a partner. It could be a paperwork error (it’s probably a paperwork error) but she’s never minded enough to follow up on it. The last time she had a partner things didn’t work out so well for her.

Still, Goldcliff itself feels a little bit like a partner. She gets to know it, through her time with the militia, and it gets to know her too. Patrol becomes a daily exercise in learning something new about the city where she lives - where she’s always lived.

And then, one day, that learning goes beyond just street names when she gets assigned her first big case: a report of a gambling ring. There was a barrel on fire, someone said, or something like that. This gang is new. And it’s fierce. And there’s something about it that just seems… familiar.

She mulls it over as she walks down the street to her first place of retcon - a slightly seedy bar on a slightly seedy street - chewing on a piece of gum, hands in the pockets of her brown leather jacket. Hurley keeps her militia badge safely tucked away in an inside pocket. She’s going undercover tonight.

When she reaches the establishment, she doesn’t say much to the other patrons, just plops down at the bar, orders a beer, and listens to the chatter around her. The bartender, a middle-aged halfling, gives her a curious look but doesn’t say much as he pours her drink.

And then someone comes and sits next to her.

It’s a woman around her age. A half-elf. With the shiniest black hair Hurley has ever seen. She doesn’t seem to pay her much mind as she orders a drink herself, but Hurley, for some reason, can’t look away. She takes a big gulp of her beer, suddenly very thirsty.

Her trance is interrupted by the sound of the door to the bar opening. Hurley watches a man step through the door. He’s fairly average in height, with close-cropped hair, a gray leather jacket with padded shoulders, and a familiar scar across his upper lip.

Immediately, a slightly sick feeling hits Hurley’s gut. It’s Maarvey. It has to be. She’d recognize him anywhere. She’d known they were on different paths in life, but she hadn’t realized just how different…

Hurley puts her glass down. Maarvey hasn’t seen her yet, she doesn’t think. But she can’t tell. He’s looking elsewhere, to a corner of the room where a group of guys with similar jackets sits. They’d come in just after Hurley had, and she’s been watching them and waiting. Waiting for their leader.

They all stand up when Maarvey comes over to them. A part of her heart drops to her feet. Hurley swallows, writes something in her little notebook about the jackets and their leader, and realizes she has to go to the bathroom.

On her way there, she gets stopped by a large hand gripping her forearm. Hurley turns around to find Maarvey staring at her, frowning.

“Ya shouldn’t be here, Hurley,” he murmurs. “There’s something going down tonight.”

“I know,” she tells him, and tries to turn away from him, but his arm reaches out to grab her jacket.

“What’s this?” Maarvey asks, holding up her militia badge.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was with them.”

“You touch even one of my guys and it won’t matter that we were friends once. Those guys are my family. Loyalty and all, ya know?”

“Matching jackets don’t make you family, Maarvey. Crime doesn’t either.”

Hurley tries to leave once again, but his grip on her arm is firm. “Where are you going?” he asks.

“The bathroom.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Ditto.”

They stand there for a couple more seconds, having some sort of staring contest, and then, out of the blue, Maarvey lets her go. Hurley doesn’t move, though. She decides, in that moment, to forget the bathroom. Her target is so close. So so close.

Maarvey lets out a whistle and suddenly the guys in the gray jackets are moving towards the door. He’s gone before Hurley can even move. She curses and runs out the door behind him. The bartender yells something about paying, but she’s long forgotten about her drink, lost in the chase.

“I’ll cover it,” a woman’s voice says, as Hurley closes the door to the bar. She doesn’t have the time to turn around and see who said it. Instead, she chases after the shark-jacket gang. Hammerhead sharks, to be specific. She can see that now. Their broad-shouldered jackets are, from the back, home to the wide nose of a hammerhead shark. One each. Slightly customised in their embroidery.

As the Hammerheads enter a cart, piling on like clowns she’d seen when the rare circus came through Goldcliff, Hurley enters her own militia cart, that she’d parked a few blocks away. She thanks her personal god that they ran those exact blocks.

Hurley chases the Hammerheads through Goldcliff. The streets are alive, night sky screaming above her as Hurley charges the cart forward, ringing the bell on the roof. Maarvey’s crew is just a little faster, though. They’ve got this engine. This remarkable engine. Hurley’s militia-cart barely stands a chance.

Still, as she loses them around a lonely corner in the rougher section of Goldcliff, Hurley can’t help but smile. Something about that lit her up inside. She can’t quite put her finger on it, though.

 

iv.

The Raven has a partner.

Maarvey can tell that much, through the dust in between their two carts. There’s someone else driving, while the glorious Raven herself is standing, waist through the roof, shooting spells at her competitors.

Maarvey dodges one of her more harmful incantations and orders his men to shoot the crossbow. They aim and fire but can’t quite seem to hit her. Her partner swerves them out of the way with a set of skills that Maarvey’s never seen before on this track. It’s… practiced, careful. Most racers out here aren’t like that.

Maarvey himself can’t quite remember how he ended up on this track. Sure, part of it was trying to prove that the Hammerheads were as much a gang as the other groups that ended up racing, even though they were newer. Still, a part of him thinks he would’ve ended up here regardless. He’s loved this thrill since the beginning.

“Fire again!” he yells at his men.

“You got it boss!”

Once again, the Raven’s cart dodges. Maarvey curses, but he’s smiling. He’s struck with a sudden curiosity, a fascination of sorts. There’s something familiar about this partner of hers. Something he just can’t quite put his finger on. A carefulness. An anxiousness. And a bravery, too. He knows her, he thinks. He has to.

Not to mention, they’re running clean. No killing. No murder. No even slight mutilation. The Raven’s partner drives and the Raven knocks people out of their carts with simple nature spells, giving them plenty of time for their safeties to kick in. And they’re winning. And it’s driving him mad.

Maarvey whistles and their cart surges forward a bit faster. They’re gaining on the Raven now, he can feel it. The wind whistles by his head with more power than any arrow and his smile grows wider at the sound.

He still can’t quite make out the partner through the dust, but he’s close. He’s so close.

“Grapple them onto us!” Maarvey yells at one of the newer recruits. J-something. He’ll learn his name eventually. He always does.

The grappling hook grips the side of the Raven’s car with a precision that’s not so much skill as it is luck - he’s feeling quite lucky today - and it slows her down just enough that he can make out the mask that the partner’s wearing.

It’s a ram. Beautiful white horns detailed with gold curl around this driver’s head. The dust should be ruining the effect - it does that with most masks - but the colors work out here. The sight of her, it just works.

“Well shit,” Maarvey says, and it’s that one moment of shock that gives the Raven the edge on them. She shoots a spell and it cuts the rope attached to the grappling hook in half. Maarvey is knocked back a little bit as their velocity rapidly changes. The Raven pulls ahead, and across the finish line. Maarvey is half-tempted to clap.

Not for the Raven - her skill stopped being a novelty after the first few races - but for her new partner. Looks like someone’s laces have been loosened a little bit after all.

Maarvey seeks the Ram out after the race. She’s sitting under one of the spectator’s stands, basking in the shade while she drinks water, bottle carefully tucked under the protruding front of her mask. Now that he’s up close, Maarvey definitely recognizes that short, curly hair. That build, too. He’d know it anywhere.

Usually, though, she’s chasing him in a cart, not the other way around.

“Looks like she found you after all,” he says, sitting down beside his old friend.

Hurley jumps when he speaks. “Shit,” she curses. “I knew this would happen. I knew it, I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Relax, Ram. Your cover’s not blown. Not when you just decimated us in that race.”

Hurley smiles. “Thanks, Hammerhead.” She moves her bottle up to take another sip of water, but then pauses and brings it back down. “What do you mean she found me?”

“The Raven was asking about the woman from the bar a few months ago. She asked me a few times, too, but I wasn’t about to tell her that she was seeking a militia-member.”

Hurley pauses for a second, processing, then smiles a little bit. “Huh,” she says. “I didn’t know I made such an impression. I thought she didn’t remember me.”

Maarvey laughs a little. “As long as you’re happy. You should be happy, kiddo. Winning your first race is a big deal. I’m just glad to see you finally came around to it.”

Hurley’s smile grows a little bit bigger. “I don’t know what it is about it that I like so much. Just… the rush, I guess. The desert.”

“The partner?”

Hurley elbows him. “Shut up.”

For a few moments, they’re young again, and the world isn’t full of weird gray in-between areas like the racetrack in the desert. Hurley offers Maarvey some of her water. He takes it. It’s a kind of peace. Then she speaks again.

“For the record, this doesn’t mean I’m not still going after your gang.”

Maarvey sighs. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “You say gang I say legitimate business. It’s all about the lingo you use.” He stands up. “Nice chatting with you, Ram. See you on the racetrack.”

Hurley’s smile falls a little. “You too,” she says, and he can see her fingering the militia-badge in her pocket. Maarvey leaves her be. It’s not his business to try and teach her about what lies in between black and white. She’ll figure that out on her own.

after sloane gets the sash, maarvey tries to tell hurley about how he really thinks he’s having an impact on this kid (little jerry)’s life, but she seems dejected and then tells maarvey about how sloane isn’t riding clean anymore

 

v.

Hurley isn’t quite sure how she ended up having weekly drinks with the leader of the gang she’s been hunting, but it happened. One night after a race, when Sloane needed to go do something and Hurley wasn’t quite up to walking the streets alone, she’d ran into Maarvey and they’d ended up at that same bar.

Then it happened every week.

Sometimes she brought Sloane, sometimes she didn’t. Maarvey never brought anyone. Hurley supposed that was for the best. She had a cover to worry about, after all.

These days, though, she doesn’t bring Sloane. Sloane is… different. She’s changing, in ways that scare Hurley more than anything ever has before. There are nights when, even when she’s lying next to her, her eyes are so far away they might as well be sleeping in different beds. Dark and half-glassed. She shakes in her sleep, too. And talks to someone she claims not to know when awake.

Needless to say, this week Hurley’s really looking forward to her drink. She normally doesn’t drink outside of these occasions. Too busy either working or racing or dodging the tail Captain Captain Bane put on her.

She knows he knows. He’s got to know. She’s not exactly the best at lying, after all. Still, he hasn’t arrested her yet, which Hurley supposes is a good sign. Or maybe he’s just a fan. She _has_ seen him at the races more than once, even before she was the one racing.

Maarvey has come to exist in the in-betweens of her life. Between the thrill that is racing as the Ram and her average, everyday life as Detective Hurley. Between her past and her present. All of her identities, all at once. He’s there, somehow. She’d even call him a friend if she wasn’t so hesitant about the idea.

Today, though, Maarvey comes into the bar with the biggest smile on his face. He saunters across the room to the dark booth where she sits and shrugs off his Hammerhead jacket.

“You’ll never believe what happened today,” he says, and Hurley stops stirring her drink to smile back at him.

“Tell me.”

Maarvey reaches to run his fingers through where his hair would be if he had more of it. Hurley’s wondered from time to time if she’d missed the point in his life where his hair was longer. Now all she’s left with are his phantom-hair habits.

“Well, there’s this guy, Little Jerry. We call him that because we already have a Jerreeeeee on the force-”

“The one with all the E’s?”

Maarvey scrunches his nose up at her. “Yeah. What about it?”

Hurley takes a sip of her drink to avoid smirking. “Nothing. Just, funny, that’s all. Hammerheads must like their vowels a lot.”

“Anyway,” he continues, louder this time. “Little Jerry’s only been here a few months but today he came into my office - I was doing some bookkeeping-”

“You mean you were cooking the books?” Hurley jokes.

Maarvey waves his hand. “Same difference.”

A few months ago she would’ve argued that there _was_ a difference, maybe even waved around her militia badge. Now, though, well… Now she’s not quite sure what the “right” thing to do is. Another gray area. Another Maarvey middle-ground.

“I was cookin’ the books, and Little Jerry comes in all nervous. I could tell he was nervous because he had his hat in his hands like a newsie or somethin’. Of course, I’m here thinking ‘oh no who’d he piss off this time’ but instead he asked me to be the best man at his wedding. Isn’t that fantastic! A best man! Man…”

Maarvey trails off, happy smile still on his face. Hurley doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look like this. He looks… proud, almost. Like he’s become the kind of person she’s always wanted him to be. And, while she’s not so sure this is exactly what she’d envisioned, she doesn’t think that original vision really matters. After all, the original vision hadn’t counted for Sloane, and Hurley doesn’t know where she’d be without her.

It is that last point that keeps her from really celebrating this development in Maarvey’s interpersonal relationships, though. Sloane’s weirdness occupies a permanent space of worry in the back of her mind now. The woman herself had occupied a fair amount of space since she first started investigating her, but this is different. This is nerve-wracking. Hurley’s starting to get scared.

“That’s really wonderful, Maarvey,” she manages, though, because she’s still a good not-friend.

His face falls a little bit. “What’s going on, Hurley?” he asks, voice suddenly suspicious. “Where’d that frown come from?”

“Sloane,” she answers, and he nods. She’s been updating him on the weekly basis about her worries. It seems to have gotten so much worse this week, though.

“Will you two be okay in time for the race?” Maarvey asks. “Can’t run a good race without simpatico partners, you know.”

Hurley finishes off her drink, letting the liquor burn down her throat. It helps, a little, but not much. She can’t even think about the race right now. Hopefully they’ll be okay. Hopefully.

“I know,” she says. That’s all she can say.

They’re quiet for a little while Maarvey finishes off his own drink. Hurley debates whether or not she should get another one. The world is already fuzzy, though, and she’s not a big fan of losing full control of her inhibitions. Her life is out-of-control enough as it is.

“It wouldn’t be a bad way to go, though, would it?” Maarvey asks, after he’s finished, voice a little ragged around the edges from the alcohol.

“What?”

“Battle-wagon racing. Wouldn’t be a bad way to go, I don’t think.”

Hurley can’t help but smile at his statement. She thinks of all the ways she’s pictured dying - not hard, in her line of work - and then thinks of that final race, the way her cart might spin out of control and careen on the rocks, too fast for her harness to save her.

“Yeah,” she admits. “It wouldn’t be the worst way.”

Hurley’s not usually a fan of morbid beauty, but her thoughts are a little too fuzzy right now to muffle the idea. She thinks of Sloane, of the two of them getting out-of-tandem with each other while on the track, of that space-out thing she does, of the questions she’s asking about things more powerful than herself. She thinks of spinning out of control in that scenario. It’s not quite as beautiful.

She coughs, raises a hand, and orders another round of drinks. Maarvey only gives her a sad smile.

 

vi.

Death does not come for Hurley in a careening cart. It comes in poison. And cherry blossoms. And soft music in the distance that’s only barely audible. Death in the form of a man name Kravitz welcomes her and Sloane to the Astral Plane with open arms and the knowledge that they are not fully dead, just mostly. Some part of themselves will live on as long as the tree does.

And Hurley, who had seen the Hammerhead battle wagon careen off the track, had heard the horns blow, and had felt some sort of pain in her chest that was secondary only to the overwhelming hurt for Sloane that had taken over her body, waits for Maarvey. She does not find him.

Through Candlenights she does not find him. She watches people come and go and Sloane tells her that maybe he survived, or maybe he’s just not here. Maybe he’s somewhere else in the wide wide expanse that is the Astral Plane. She says this with a careful, comforting, hand on her shoulder. It is not enough. Hurley still worries.

And then, one day, Kraavitz cuts his slit in reality and flies in carrying Maarvey and two other men Hurley has never seen before by the scruffs of their astral-necks. He drops him at her feet, like one might drop a piece of garbage, and continues carrying the other two to a place beyond where Hurley’s vision ends.

Hurley throws her arms around her former friend. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” she screams, and a few of the other relatively-recently-deceased look over at the sound.

“Here and there,” Maarvey mumbles, but he’s smiling. “Everywhere. Was a robot for a little bit. Almost got back at those assholes from the racetrack.”

Sloane laughs at his story, and it is, as it always is, the most beautiful sound Hurley’s ever heard. She wraps an arm around his other side and the two of them help him walk all the way to where the Astral side of their cherry tree grows - where they’ve decided to make home.

“Come on,” Hurley says. “You can tell us all about it over drinks.”

In the world of the Astral Plane everything is gray.

And then it’s a black ocean. But that’s later.


End file.
